March 14, 2020 By: Juanita Jean Herownself Category: Uncategorized
Customer Ralph sent me a very nice shopping story today. I want him to tell it to you in the comments and we’d all like to hear from you, too.
Are the shelves bare? Is your community kicking in to make sure the kids off from school are being fed? Did you get into a fight at the Walgreens over the last package of handy wipes? Share your situation.
Welcome to The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
My name is Susan DuQuesnay Bankston. I live in Richmond, Texas, in the heart of Tom DeLay's old district. It's nuttier than squirrel poop here.
I am honored and privileged to know Miss Juanita Jean Herownself, hairdresser extraordinary and political maven. Since she does not have time to fiddle with this internet stuff, I type her website for her and you can read it if you want to. If you don't, she truly does not give a big bear's butt.
A lot of what I post here has to do with local politics, but you probably have the same folks in your local government.
This ain't a blog. Blogs are way too trendy for me. This is a professional political organization.
Just got back from target, had to make an emergency run for tonic water. Apparently I’m the only one in Waco who is worried about Malaria in the post apocalypse. And I also had a surplus of gin.
Many of the shelves were bare. Milk was almost gone and paper products scarce. An old man (veteran) in a wheelchair was ahead of me in the check out line buying paper table napkins because there was no toilet paper. He was about $1.75 short on the bill and he was trying to figure out how many napkins he could afford. After a brief discussion about injustice, I paid off the $1.75 and promised the gentleman that from now on I will flip off every republican candidate for every office ever and always. Amen. $1.75 was such a small price to feel so good about doing what I’ve been doing all along.
1Ralph,
Thanks for handling veteran’s affairs, when Veteran’s Affairs doesn’t.
Here in Hawaii we clear paper products off the shelves for dock strikes, hurricanes, whatnot, and now COVID-19. One of the big topics on local social networks is which stores have what products.
It hasn’t become as bad as in this short video yet, but at the rate it’s going:
2https://mysocialmate.co/media/2262400252586173246/B9lqQsDJyM-
I made an emergency run to Spec’s at opening today to acquire emergency….uh, hydration fluids in preparation for the onslaught. Maybe 20 people in the store, but the shelves were oddly stocked. Plenty of whiskeys, but whole sections of tequila and Pinot Grigio wiped out. I got what I needed (all the car would hold) and hauled ass out of there after admonishing everyone to wash their hands. My good deed for the day.
3We’re in our RV in Oregon and stopped in Salem for a normal (for us) grocery shopping. Trader Joe’s was running low on some stuff, including milk. Fair number of empty spaces on shelves. Then we went to Walmart. The entire stock of toilet paper was gone. Lots of other things too. Oh, I could see Clorox wipes and hand sanitizer being gone, and some things low, but the toilet paper thing is insane. Americans, for whatever reason, believe that toilet paper is a critical item, on the lines of basic foods or water. It’s not.
Hopefully folks will get that out of their systems soon and do their stocking up in a more sensible way. Of course, when you can’t get accurate info from the government agencies that should be providing it people get scared, more scared than they should. Scared enough to be very concerned is good. It’s necessary. But scared so much they do stupid things is not good at all.
4Went to my local Albertsons this afternoon. The store was calm with perhaps a lower number of patrons than usual. Toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, and most of the kleenix was gone. Bananas were the only thing gone in the produce dept. Hamburger and most of the chicken was gone. Pork and the more costly cuts of beef were available. And apparently we are not worried about stocking up on frozen pizza as the cases were full. Plenty of bacon but no eggs. Weird. Oh, and of course the bottled water was gone. The young man who helped me out to my car said that yesterday looked like the day before a Thanksgiving. He said they could spot their usual customers but the store was filled with pirates loading up two and three carts apiece. He thinks the pirates plan to resell the stuff. On a positive note, our mayor is collecting names of people who would like to make meals, babysit and run errands for hospital workers so they can work their double shifts.
5I haven’t bought toilet paper yet…because I channel my grandma too much. Whenever the Safeway has TP on special (every 6-8 weeks?) I buy as many of the big 8 packs as I can for **$3.99**. So we always have a backlog of 8-10 rolls of TP and paper towels. 🙂
On the other hand, we do live way east of nowhere (SE Colo), and even in good times we are on the end of the shipping lines. So I decided to be sure to buy two or three of things we always need. The first things we did this with? Dog and cat food.
We’ve now got a stash of all kinds of soap and cleaning stuff, plus OTC meds like cough remedies, plus extra rice, beans and a few canned goods. But with those last things, we figure if we haven’t needed them in a few months, they will go to our local food bank.
6HEB has changed store hours to 8AM-8PM. At 7AM there was a long line waiting to get in. We already had a decent stock of supplies in preparation for spring storm and hurricane season, so no real need for us to go out. I did make a run for coffee beans, because life without coffee is unthinkable. I already had enough wine and whiskey on hand to last for the duration. People become lemmings. They see someone in the store buying lots of toilet paper, so they think they need to. Then it spreads via the interwebtubez, and shelves empty out. Lemmings.
71) add some bitters and lime to tonic and gin and your covered for malaria (quinine in tonic), yellow fever ( something in bitters formula) and scurvy as well (Lime)
82) Glad to see the rest of the country adopting Hawaiian custom since 1947 177 Day ILWU strike of hoarding TP. Now lets talk about SPAM
Kroger (the midwest equivalent of HEB and Publix) has also cut hours, closing from midnight to 6 AM to allow stockers to, well, stock.
I was there at 7:30 AM and got behind a couple in the 65-75 age range, and they were in a genuine, wild-eyed panic. Both wearing surgical masks (but no gloves), and while at the checkout kept running back into the store. “Oh no, we forgot aspirin.” Guy runs and comes back with 7 bottles of 200 aspirin each. “What about lemons? I don’t know, we might have some.” Wife scurries off and comes back with all the lemons she can carry.
It was so over-the-top that I looked around to see if they were faking it and somebody was filming for youtube. Nope, it was sincere panic buying. I had a book to read and so ignored them, but the youngster in line behind me finally blew up at them for holding up everyone in the line with their nonsense. They quietened down and finished checking out.
I was strongly tempted to start coughing loudly and wiping my forehead as if in a sweating fever, but did not want them to have a heart attack. Or get into a tizzy that leads to a car wreck leaving the parking lot.
Of course, they had stacks of toilet paper in their cart as well. So much for the stolid, salt-of-the-earth Midwesterners, afraid of nothing. Did Fox News finally start admitting last night that maybe Covid-19 was more than just a hoax to blacken Trump’s good name?
9Ralph:
10You’re da man.
Lots of neighbors posting on NextDoor volunteering to go out and pick up groceries, prescriptions, etc. for high risk people as our city is pretty much in lockdown. Such neighborliness really give me hope for people.
11Our deacons have started a fund for kids out of school. Many of them don’t get breakfast except at school. We are trying to fill that gap. Not sure how long schools will be shut.
12El Jefe – drop that tonic and step up to a French 75: a great gin cocktail topped off with champagne. If we going to die, go in style!
13My local H.E.B. on the edge of Port Arthur, is a well oiled machine. Through Rita. Ike. Harvey, and now Covid 19. 8:00 to 8:00 for us as well. They have shortages like everyone else. But they handle it well.
14And here in Dallas at the local Costco people are hauling out cases upon cases of bottled water. Like COVID-19 will cause the reservoirs to empty and the taps to stop flowing. Or something. Costco cleared out their paper goods areas and had 45000 cases of water stacked up in their places. Hubby reports the hamburger buns and frozen vegetables are also cleaned out. Nobody has any hand sanitizer or wipes. However, I stocked up on beer and Ed’s Smooth Red wine, so I’ve got what I need.
15Regular shopping on Thursday, picked up the ONE package (of 8) of TP we’ll need for the next month, and noticed stocks were down slightly. Last night decided I really should get a package of clorox wipes for door handles and such at the office, so stopped by Staples on the way home from work today (Saturday)…also concerned because West Coast daughter cannot buy her regular package of TP ANYWHERE either in Portland or on Amazon. Nope. Nothing in Staples. Nothing at Publix. Nothing at Harris Teeter…where they’re also sold out of spaghetti and put a 3-can limit on canned tuna and other meat.
Saw neighbors doing their regular Saturday shopping just shaking their heads. Coronalypse!!!
However, the hoarders apparently don’t shop at the local small organic grocery, which still has it’s regular small supply of bamboo-based TP, and I understand the Mom & Pop stores over the line in Tennessee still have regular supplies of everything….I guess the hoarders are all panicked at Walmart, instead!
Meanwhile, folks are discussing how to get kids fed if the schools close. Some of our county schools have more than 75% of their kids on free or reduced-price lunches, and we’re concerned.
16Maybe this non-tRump catastrophe will show that some aspects (maybe many) of socialism can benefit us all. Caring for friends and neighbors, even singing to the ‘hood seem like good things, no matter where we are. No COVID-19 in our OR coast county, but it is next door. Lotsa pirates from Portland cleaning out our local Big Boxes because they already cleaned out their own. Lemmings and poachers.
17@JDM: The toilet paper craze is not specifically American, actually. The other nations seem to value that particular item too, for some weird reason.
Otherwise, here in small town in Central Oregon, there is still some toilet paper left in some small stores. No hand sanitizer though. But people are very nice to each other, even when the check out lines are long, and shopping charts are filled to the brim.
P.S. On disinfectants. You do not need some fancy stuff. Good old vodka (the cheapest one) and/or vinegar are working the same way. I’m not kidding. Been there, done that (i.e. lived tens of years in Soviet Union)
18I have made only one foray to the store. I did pick up a few staples. I was going to pick up a package of TP, as Sue has persistent gastric issues (side effects of chemo), but that was a bare shelves situation. Also gone was most of the frozen veg, only things like Brussels and Lima’s left. There was plenty of fresh milk in the cases, but the UHT shelf stable stuff was gone.
On other fronts, a whole lot of stuff has shut down, Many universities, started to isolate themselves, first by halting outside events at their lecture and concert spaces. Now Harvard and MIT have sent their students home.
We have had a dozen concerts either cancelled outright, or to be rescheduled (hopefully). A music practice I have attended almost every Monday for the past 35 years, and has been running for 50+, is cancelled, until further notice. (We meet at MIT)
Restaurants are still open for the most part, but they have seen a shift to takeout.
19I hate, loathe, despise grocery shopping. Not so much the shopping part as the putting-away part. So it’s normal for me to bulk buy so I can do it as rarely as possible.
I had made my usual run just before all hell broke lose and, given the situation, decided to do it again a week later. Hey! I’m 72 years old — I want to stay the hell out of the line of fire for as long as possible. So I’m well provisioned at the moment.
And well, I’ve been buying toilet paper by the case and having it delivered to my house since the 1970’s — so I didn’t notice if they were out of that. But the water was just about gone during my second trip.
Wait, what? WATER? It does still come out of the tap, right? Yep, I checked after I got home. It’s still flowing. But here in Florida, apparently, water is a main concern.
And, oh yeah, hand sanitizing products are now officially extinct here — as they are everywhere, I imagine. I’m not concerned — I buy soap, vinegar, rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide in bulk, just like everything else.
And I don’t plan to leave the house in the foreseeable future anyway. Who knew being an introvert would come in handy in my old age?
20treehugger @ 15:
21Hmm. After reading your comment, I got to thinking. Maybe this water-hoarding thang is a hurricane country phenomenon. A catastrophe happens — stock up on water. Like a reflex.
Bottle water?? Why??? The city water is usually safer, there are not that many Flint, Mi in USA. So many will not look into how their city does the water, but will have faith in bottled water which is from?? And processed by??? Its not like the virus is going to destroy the water tower, it aint a hurricane!
22Toilet paper??? Why??? Yes based on your crap rate you need enough for a few weeks, but if you run out most houses have a buyBull handy! And using toilet paper to cover your mouth is really silly as you will get lung disease from breathing the micro-particles of paper.
Living in the island state of WV but it was still more like a Mad Max movie at the local Kroger yesterday, no bananas or milk; no chicken or hamburger. Shelves empty for many canned goods. And of course the empty shelves of paper products…I just don’t get it. And the bottled water rush…we still have it coming from our faucets and I hate all that plastic being tossed into landfills. Plan on staying in until heading for work in the morning.
23trump did it….. get rid of trump…after all obama caused ebola & 1 person did die from it in the US
24A few days ago at the supermarket (shopping before sunrise so there were no crowds) I made sure I had enough staples to see me through for a few weeks. And thanks to a birthday, I was recently gifted with two bottles of good scotch. So I can stay snugly tucked in at home for the foreseeable future. Yesterday the local Walmart and big supermarket announced limited hours, so things will start getting nutty here (North Texas). Stay safe, everyone.
25I was at CVS yesterday. No paper goods; manager said it had ‘been crazy.’ Didn’t go to Wal-Mart but FB feeds say it has been given the Ethiopian locust treatment.
But at Safeway (which I like because they hire the mentally disabled to bag groceries at union wages) Friday there were pallets of TP out front. In the parking lot a woman was grousing that the Safeway manager had allowed a customer to buy 10 cases of hand sanitizer.
My takeaway? Sell your Safeway stock for whatever you can get. People won’t shop there even in these End Times.
26My new hero: Gov.JB Pritzker
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/coronavirus-governor-pritzker-trump-shit-together-airports-chicago-ohare
27Here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we are blessed with a current governor who is an Honest to God doctor. He has been on top of this from Day 1, and proactively closed schools starting next week. All the local unis are opting for online through the rest of the semester except Liberty. God is only protecting them you see, despite a petition by students.
I live in the western end of the state, and knock wood–we haven’t had any positives in this region. Because we’re far poorer than Northern Virginia or the Norfolk area, we’re already used to providing free food to all students regardless of income during the summer break. Adults can get a meal for $1, and they are setting up feeding sites or distributing along school bus routes.
There are also some local churches who do the Backpack weekend and other projects, and I can’t say enough about Feeding America, Agency on Aging, God’s Pitcrew, Gleaning for America or the wonderful local folks who support them. So we already have some infrastructure in place.
As for shopping, I’m recovering LDS but old food storage habits never die. We also have our homeless disabled Vet son staying with us right now, and he’s up to date on all things survival. As for the crazy people out there right now, turn off the YouTube and stay away from the Doomer Porn. We’ve had some beautiful Spring like days, so get yourself outside and listen to the birds sing. That Vitamin D will do you a world of good.
28@Susan Crites – I grew up in the tiny town of Mancos, CO.
We went to Target in Duluth on Thursday and found all the bleach and TP gone as well as hand sanitizers of any kind. There was no panic and shopping carts weren’t packed. We found TP at another grocery store and these seemed to be a good supply.
We have a well and live in the country so isolation is easier for us. People are very sensible up here which was one of our incentives for moving to this area.
29A friend mentioned that maybe TP is on!g manufactured in China. Thus the panic buying cause manufacture was stopped during Chinese shutdowns. I have no idea but that’s about as reasonable a reason as I’ve heard. SWVA is doing damn little testing which is the only reason we have no cases documented. Yet. I know of one highly suspicious case near the university that should be tested but is not.
30In all the disaster movies I’ve seen, people are out there seeking and hoarding ammo & liquor — never TP. If things get really bad, I’ll just go to Walgreens and buy something inexpensive. Their receipts always seem to be three feet long.
31Had to go to Kroger this morning due to being out of cat food. No shortage of pet stuff.
Produce was limited, no paper products, limited dairy and frozen veggies. No eggs. By the time I made the circuit, produce guys were putting out peppers, strawberries. and asparagus @.88 a pound. Plenty of beef, steaks and roast. No poultry at all.
The stores was crowed for 8:30 on a Sunday. People were polite. We will be vegan for awhile.
32Western Washington State (south of Tacoma).
Last Monday was our normal Costco/WinCo trip. Lots of people in both stores but the only “panic buying” seemed to be in the toilet paper section of Costco/Puyallup and, even then, I didn’t see more than two packs in a cart.
We have two bathrooms and each bathroom takes a different toilet paper so we were already set.
Made a short run to Fred Meyer (Kroger) on Friday for ghee-dunk; lots of people in the store but it was about 5pm so they could have been doing their just-got-off-work shopping.
Dave was one of seven children so we always have fully-stocked cupboards and freezer. I look forward to eating some of it.
WinCo is closing between midnight and 5am to stock.
Like Jan @11, people on NextDoor here are offering to pick up things for others and some are even offering free babysitting for those who can still go to work.
Pro Tip: I understand public restrooms (stores, restaurants, etc.) can’t keep toilet paper in their stalls. We have few plans to leave home over the next few weeks but I made my own Traveling Toilet Paper Emergency Pack. It’s in my handbag and the rest of the roll is in the vehicle. I am 73; just wait ’til YOU get old!
https://i.imgur.com/7SoFNET.jpg
33Speaking of public restrooms, I was in the one at our local supermarket Friday. Out of the four guys who were in there when I entered I was the only one who washed hands before leaving. It’s so mindless..
34Many years ago Johnny Carson made a joke about toilet paper shortages (there was no natural disaster or crisis, it was just a damn joke) and the next day the stores emptied.
It doesn’t take much to get Americans panicky about wiping their butts.
35Apparently there’s a German word for all this (of course there is): Hamsterkäufe. From the way hamsters stuff as much seeds and grass and whatnot into their chubby little cheeks because they never know where their next meal may be.
36Since I had scheduled Friday off, I stopped into Giant on the way home with a small shopping list. One of the items was T.P. which we generally get in 12-packs but the aisle was ransacked. Also needed bread flour — it was out. But I got almost everything else on the list which wasn’t all that long. Decided to take a long shot and go over to the Weis and where Giant had lotsa shelves with “sorry out of stock” signs, Weis people were restocking and I found the flour and 2 6-packs of the preferred brand (there is a hierarchy that bottoms out at the stuff in the industrial-sized rolls in the stalls at work).
Spent most of Friday gearing up and setting up to work from home starting Monday. Finally got the VPN configured so it will connect and then took the big white dog out for a 2+ mile walk for almost an hour. (The time is extended by the episodes of stop-and-sniff). So Saturday, I did the normal weekend shopping at the local IGA which was well-stocked with almost everything. There were a few single items that were in short supply but not entire aisles. Also got a bag of sunflower seeds as the red-wings are back along with the ever-hungry grackles. The neighbors 4 hens were out and when they noticed me opening the galvanized can that I store the seeds in, they hustled over to see what was going on so I had to give them a little pile all their own. They have done a spectacular job of cleaning out under the feeders as well as scratching and grubbing in the weediest parts of the garden which is no small favor for me. They make me laugh just by being hens. And as it was 3-14, I made an apple pie.
37All in all, except for perishables like milk and eggs, there’s little need to do any shopping for a while. Eggs we can get from our Amish neighbors, milk may be a challenge, but I can get a lot of meats direct from the farm or, in one case, the feed mill since Ms. Eliza also has a herd of Angus cows and sells meat through the feed mill, too.
Here in the southern California mountains small towns, as of my shopping run Thursday, shelves were bare of anything paper…except Kleenex, which only added to the absurdity. They still had most varieties of canned goods, fresh meat, produce and dairy. I’m told that on Friday, the store (our version of Kroger) looked as though all 15,000 residents of our area came in at once, forcing the store to close until its next delivery. In the valley below, the news is filled with video of fistfights at the big box stores like Costco over paper products, bottled water and other “necessities,” and our governor has ordered all geezers to stay the hell home. Being here in the mountains, that’s just daily life for us. Mama taught me to be prepared to cook for an army on a minute’s notice, so I keep our pantry stocked with backups to my backups because I replace things as I use them, in case of times like these.
My beloved and I are retired and introverts and we like each other better than most anyone else on the planet, and we only have canine kids, so we are just swell, treehouse voyeurs to 35 million people simultaneously losing their minds. My friend George used to say to not take things you cannot control so personally, to observe world events for their entertainment value and you’ll never be disappointed. I wish you were still with us, George because you’d have loved this! Not to mention our three-year national nightmare.
Plus I got to the Rite Aid pharmacy before they ran out of whiskey and I picked up 3 bottles of Wild Turkey — it’s a great sanitizer and also better for my sanity in regular, moderate doses.
38Please excuse that long run-on sentence to start the second paragraph. Had to sample the Wild Turkey to make sure it’s not just colored water, didn’t I?
39Geeze! I hadn’t even thought about tonic till just a few minutes ago! I’ll be back…
40Quick update from California: Schools are closed until at least the end of the month. Bars and restaurants have been asked to close. State universities are conducting classes online. Casinos, sports venues, theaters, amusement parks, mega-churches, anywhere where large gatherings occur, shut down.
Los Angeles Police Dept (my former employer) has reported it’s first officer contracting the virus. He is a supervisor (Sgt. or Lt.) at Pacific division whose area includes Venice Beach, one of southern California’s big tourist attractions (Muscle Beach) and has about half the homeless population of LA County. Tracking his contacts will be challenging. I sure hope the body camera was turned on all day! San Bernardino County, where we live, announced our first confirmed case today.
Back to the debate!
41I was lucky in that I ran out of TP just before the craziness and got 12 rolls. I wish I could say the same for paper towels!
Food Lion and Giant were all out yesterday. I may head to Wegman’s and Trader Joe’s today.
I usually go skating on my way into work and had planned on going even with us all working from home. It’s not a very touchy-feely sport and we don’t use each other’s equipment. When I got there this morning at 6:45, I discovered that they’ve cut hours. They’re only open from 9AM to 6PM.
I need my exercise or I’m going to go completely nuts!!!!
42